Made in Manhattan

From its facade, Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria doesn’t look too different from other downtown NYC Italian joints. But don’t be fooled. The three-month-old offshoot of NoHo institution Il Buco is home to one of the city’s most impressive kitchen setups–an expansive, white subway-tiled basement space that was custom built to house a village-worth of food-makers, from baker to pasta maker to butcher. In it, the staff can turn out house-made bread, gelato, olive oils, and aged cheese. But the star of the show is a charcuterie program that’s not only turning out incredible meat–it’s also legal (a true feat given NYC’s over-the-top regulations).

This charcuterie program exists–after 10 years of planning and lofty investments–because the owner Donna Lennard (pictured right) was dead set on making it happen. Lennard opened the original Il Buco in 1994, and a few years ago decided she wanted a second restaurant where customers could sit and drink a glass of wine, eat a quick meal, or just “stop by and pick up everything they need to make a beautiful dinner at home.”

Alimentari & Vineria opened in September. But until recently, the space was lacking its centerpiece (the real reason for a second restaurant): salumi cured on site. Federal, state, and city regulations have tightened over the years, making both in-house curing and importing high-quality Italian meats difficult. In the early 2000s, the original Il Buco made its own prosciutto and salami, using meat from the Ossabaw hog from a farm in North Carolina, “and it was really beautiful,” Lennard said, “but then, of course, we had this big disaster.”

In May 2006, with little warning, the Health Department shut down the program. Not only shut down, actually, but according to a NYT piece written around that time, the inspectors “destroyed all the cured meats.”

So the second time around, Lennard and her team decided to do it right (and legally). They set up a super-strict government-approved plan (called a HACCP, pronounced hah-sip, it’s short for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point, and one source says it was “first developed to ensure the safety of astronauts”), whichbasically means using approved equipment, detailing a process that’s then approved, and making sure, damn sure, that you follow it.

Chef Christopher Lee breaks down a pig in the temperature-controlled butcher room

To make the flavor of the salumi as high-end as the set up, Lennard brought in master salumiere Christopher Lee to work with Il Buco’s longtime salumiere, Bernardo Flores. Chef Lee is a veteran of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse and first learned to cure meat in Italy in the ’70s. But building a legal charcuterie program here gave the veteran an entirely new challenge. “When making the HACCP plan I initially wrote down that I’d check on the salumi every four hours,” Lee said. “But when the test inspector looked over our records, he pointed out that I had gone at four minutes past 12, then ten minutes before 4, and so on–it’s that strict.” The chef quickly learned that “four times per day” was a much more reasonable goal to set.

Store Manager Aaron Oster sets out gelato

A stack of Lonza, a mild, cured pork loin, ready to sell

Pastry Chef Keren Weiner works in the prep kitchen

An Irinox blast chiller and Miwe multi-deck baking ovens line the walls of the kitchen

Alimentari & Vineria also spared no expense in equipment: Most restaurants don’t need a $26K, computer-controlled, walk-in curing system flown in from Italy, but it definitely doesn’t hurt. The two cases (one for the “bloom” phase of curing, the other for aging–we’ll get into that later) actually mimic the humidity and temperature cycles of day, night, and the Italian seasons.

After a few months of initial curing, the first batch of salumi is now on sale at the Alimentari–and on the menu at both Il Buco locations. (We highly, highly recommend trying the fennel-spiced finocchiona if you get a chance).

Check out our next post on Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria to see how Salumieri Lee and Flores actually make the sausage (and lardo, and prosciutto, and guanciale, and capocollo, and more). –Sam Dean